Friday, April 03, 2015

Have you ever felt like you’re too strange or different for anyone to like you or take you seriously? Of course you have: you’re only human.

But, just as we’ve seen in the movies, nonconformists are sexy. They’re alluring, they like obscure things, and they don’t play by the rules. It’s why Claire fell for John Bender in “The Breakfast Club” and why Landon fell for Jamie in “A Walk To Remember.”

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Now, an awesome new scientific study has proven that marching to the beat of your own drum doesn’t just make you a more fulfilled person on the inside — it also gives you more game in the dating world.

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia asked 115 undergraduate students to read the online profiles of 20 people and then rate them on their attractiveness and decide if they’d date them IRL.

The catch is, researchers manipulated each of the profiles to either imply conformity with statements like “She is quite happy to go along with what others are doing,” or nonconformity with contrasting statements like “She often does her own thing rather than fit in with the group.” The results showed that both guys and girls preferred people who appeared to be freethinkers and who represented non-conformist attitudes.

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In another twist, participants were also asked to guess which members of their own sex others would find most attractive — and women were the worst at correctly predicting guys’ preferences. The researchers point out that this is important info for women to know because it could help them realize that men don’t necessarily lean toward women who are submissive, agreeable, or non-independent. “Women overestimated how attracted men would be to the conformist women,” the researchers wrote. “People think that men prefer conformist women, but this impression is discrepant from reality.”

We know what you might be thinking: are these results exclusive to Australians? Are they possibly just more awesome, free-spirited people than the rest of the world? The researchers wondered the same things, so they repeated the same study on British, American, and Indian people. Much to our relief, they found that, despite cultural differences, the results were all the same: most participants preferred non-conformists of the opposite gender.

The takeaway here is that if you’ve ever been afraid to be yourself because you’re worried about what your crush might think, chances are they’ll find you even more attractive! So channel your inner Tris Prior or John Bender, embrace your uniqueness, and keep being your sexy self.